Book search winding down — Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.

It's Time For FriendFeed To Kill Twitter — The big news today is that Twitter was up for short period, before once again going down. — So that was a little sarcastic, but news of Twitter being down simply isn't news anymore. There has been another round (seemingly never ending now) …

Update Your Profile From More Websites — A few weeks ago, we told you about the new ability to import stories into your Mini-Feed from other sites. Since then, we've been working on increasing the number of sites that work with this feature. We're happy to report that now …

Rumor: Tablet Mac coming this fall (updated 3x) — I don't often publish first hand rumors, but today I've something special for you, if you like tablets that is. — A little birdy tells me that Apple will announce a 12 or 13-inch tablet in the fall of this year. Most likely in the September or October time frame.

Tablet Mac Coming in Fall 2008? — Jason O'Grady revives rumors of a tablet Mac in his ‘The Apple Core’ blog today with claims that the long-rumored Mac Tablet would finally be arriving later this year. — Specifically, he believes that Apple will announce a 12" or 13" tablet “in the fall” of this year.

MicroHoo: The Gates Factor — Sure, Microsoft and Yahoo are talking this weekend and they are talking about a lot of configurations of a revived deal to merge the companies together in some way that makes all parties happy. — But make no mistake: It is Yahoo (YHOO) pushing the one-price-buys-all idea …

How “Why Startups Fail” Fails — David Feinleib at Mohr Davidow Ventures pens a piece called, “Why Startups Fail.” Here are his four reasons with my thoughts below. … This is exactly why we encourage new companies to stay as far away from venture funding as they can. VC's encourage you to spend!

Akimbo, Dot Gone — Akimbo, an early entrant in the Internet Video game has shuttered its doors, as first indicated by VentureBeat and confirmed by NewTeeVee. Peter Chantel, CFO of the company told NewTeeVee that the nine-year-old company has held onto a skeleton staff that will find a buyer for the company.

Reliving the clone wars — Psystar's efforts have rekindled Mac clone talk—but don't expect Apple to join in — In April 1995, while lunching with reporters at San Francisco's trendy LuLu restaurant, Power Computing CEO Steve Kahng was asked how his company, which had just released …

Man ‘stole rental cars after planting GPS devices in them’ — A 30-year-old man has been indicted on charges of stealing rental cars by installing global positioning system devices in rented vehicles, tracking their location after they are returned to rental companies, and then stealing them by using copied keys, police said.

Blu-ray Awaits Its Spoils — Blu-ray may have won the format war, but it hasn't won over many consumers. — Now was supposed to be the boom time for the young video technology, pitched as a high-definition replacement for the DVD. In January, consumer electronics company Toshiba dropped support …

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